Modern vehicles utilize a vast variety of data services, ranging from onboard computing systems to remote data reporting and access. Vehicle telematics units provide the ability to communicate with remote networks, and these communication services can be used to update firmware and software, obtain media, and even can be used to send email from the vehicle and manage phone calls.
Transfer of data to and from remote networks requires some form of connection that can access and communicate with a remote network. A common solution to this need is to use a cellular network. Cellular networks, however, often come with a cost associated with data transfer. While the cost may be nominal for a single transaction, if an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is incurring the cost for OEM-specified transactions, such as diagnostics and software updates, the cost can be significant when aggregated over all the vehicles on the road.
Using Wi-Fi or other similar inexpensive or free services can result in data savings, but data transfer under such conditions may require frequent restarts because a vehicle tends to move around, which means the vehicle will be unlikely to stay in the range of any particular connection for a prolonged period of time. Also, such services may only be available at select time periods or locations, which makes them an unreliable choice for a sole means of data transfer.